HP
also reported that it plans to announce that its board of directors has
authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems
Group (PSG). HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among
others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other
transaction.

IDC produced similar figures and reported that HP shipped
15.2 million PCs/18.1% compared to 10.9 million/12.9% for Dell.

Despite HP's beastly PC shipments, the never-ending race to
the bottom when it comes to final transaction prices for consumers means that
there's little room for profit in this cutthroat business. While Apple can get
away with charging customers $999
for an 11" notebook or $2,499
for a 17" desktop replacement notebook, PC users tend to be more price
sensitive.

A June
report from The Loop suggests
that Apple makes more money from selling just one computer than HP does from
selling seven.

Bloomberg reports that HP, which is helmed by
Leo Apotheker, wants to leave the hardware business behind and focus on its
more lucrative software and cloud services offerings. “This is the direction we
want him to take,” stated ISI Group analyst Abhey Lamba. “Get out of a low-
margin business and focus more on his core competency, which is software.”

The stupid part about it is they didn't like Compaq making better PCs than them, so they bought them and disbanded Compaq's R & D teams. Now they have decided they don't want to be a PC maker after all, so they have effectively binned two highly reputable brands.

Towards the end they weren't, but once upon a time Compaq was the company which created the PC-compatible industry. They were the first to reverse-engineer IBM's PC BIOS, which helped catapult them to the global lead in PC sales.

But yeah, the last time I had to fix a Compaq, the problem was a busted 3.5" floppy drive. No problem, I thought, I had plenty of extra floppies. I tried them, only to find out that Compaq had programmed their BIOS to only recognize Compaq floppy drives. I had to order one from them for $50(!) to get the computer working again.

Don't get me wrong, one of my first PC's was a Prolinea 4/25s and it was a good PC. I would have rather had an IBM 486 with OS/2 Warp (at least before Windows95 came out) but it was free, the year was 1991, and I was 10.

But it lay somewhere between superior homebuilt PC's with Asus motherboards that had VLB and eventually PCI slots, and *caugh* Packard Bell. Not exceptional, and not unreliable crap. Infact, it took an Intel DX4/100 Overdrive and I used it until the socket-7 K6 came out and built my next PC around it.

The reason HP bought Compaq was for the complete opposite reason they are announcing what they are today. 10 years ago, they wanted the consumer market, and now, they appearantly don't.

Mark Hurd must be laughing himself to death. I'm sure he's quite comfortable at Oracle as the HP empire crumbles under poor management.

To paraphrase talking Barbie, "Tech is hard!". I mean really what are they to do? Killing WebOS is probably the right choice - it wasn't likely to succeed so cutting your loses isn't a bad idea.

But the big question is "Where do you go from here?". It appears that they figure moving up the food chain to enterprise hardware/software is going to be easier than servicing fickle customers. The Autonomy acquisition seems indicate that this is where they want to live.

I'm no Apple fan-boy....but I can't think of any other company that was able to pull out of the nose dive and recover to such lofty heights. Steve Jobs is underpaid - do you really think that this happens without him? And as great as Jobs is...they were lucky, lucky, lucky.

HP was not about to go toe-to-toe with Apple and win. IBM, Alcatel, Intel...all of those guys are going to give Apple a wide birth. Google appears to be the only heavyweight capable taking them on.

HP is in a heck of a mess at a time when companies are looking to cut back on capital spending. I expect to see layoffs every quarter or every 2nd quarter for the next couple of years.

Leo Apotheker is either going to earn his salary or history will judge him as the man who put gasoline on the fire.

I take it that you didn't spend more than two seconds thinking sbout thst. Motorola is a very old company. They may have invented cellphones, but they made long and short range radios and satellite equipment before that. They still operate satellites in orbit, control communications and broadcast signals, roll out state-wide radio networks, and sell walkie-talkies to police forces around the planet. That's only the tiniest fraction of what they do.

There is HUGE difference between SELLING a part of your business and spinning off a separate holding company. IBM did the latter. Lenovo was not anything but a tax shelter for IBM before 2003. And when the PC business became cutthroat, dumped it for the same reason HP is. It hurts bottom line and gross margins.

Another example is AMD and Globalfoundries. "Sell" the weaker part of your business in order to avoid investors seeing the unprofitable side.

You don't even NEED to install drivers for their real printers. You need to buy a printer that costs more than $99.

The bloated drivers are full of junk to sell you online photo printing and various other useless crap. Sort of like the trial AV software preinstalled on your $399 PC. It's how they can sell the stuff so cheap.

Not sure what makes you state that. Either a printer has only minimal functionality using a driver integrated into the OS, or with any modern printer you need to install a driver, including networked printers, including anything over $99.

The drivers aren't bloated, it's the helper apps that are which you can disable as they are not needed.

They can sell "cheap" because like most of the competitors they make back the money on ink and toner, and to a larger extent today the other replacement parts as they break. Used to be you could get a printer that only took up 3 cubic feet of desk space and had 15K to 30K page cartridges. Today it's more like 6K, 10K at most and you can't even pick the things up except in certain locations as the flimsy frame will bend.

These idiots took over VoodooPC which WAS a boutique gaming computer maker (like Alienware still is but now under Dell) that made very nice high end (very pricey too, but competitive with other boutique) machines. When HP bought them out they had 3 units in production I remember, their desktop system, a laptop, and a small form factor pc with an external power source. Once HP got their hands on it they killed off the desktop and laptop and now they have just the little tiny underpowered machine for a waaay too high outrageous price. HP tried the gaming computer thing once, their Blackbird failed hard and was also too pricey. When you look at a gaming machine and go whoa, this thing is expensive, I'll go back to Alienware, you know it’s expensive. HP ruins everything they touch. They should stick with making mediocre machines for the mass consumers.

Envy was the fruit of Voodoo. They had Envy (laptop), Omen (desktop) and i forgot the name of the small one just this minute but the point is that HP just took it from Voodoo and slapped their logo onto it, no new dev or anything.

Shit, if they are trying to unload these things for something like $199, i would probably buy it just to use as a browser. Right now I have a droidx and a laptop. Don't really need a tablet right now, but if the price drops far enough on remaining stock, it could be a decent buy.

I don't know how HP has managed to be the number one computer maker in the world, with their lackluster customer service combined with cheap quality, but overpriced, throw-away computers. I'm glad to see them go, only hope Dell follows suit.Burn HP burn!!

Customer service, (un-)cheap quality, and non-throw away computers (just which computer isn't considered throw away, anyway except one so obscenely priced that service and replacement parts exceed the value of the used system right after the warranty ends?) all reduce overhead so the system can sell for lower cost.

Number one isn't about making what you, or I, consider the "best" product, only what more people consider the best value.

Look at the history of computer based companies. We used to have so many brands to choose from. Then, larger ones don't like the competitors and bought them. It's more often after they bought the companies, they try to integrate both companies products but eventually failed to get any where.

As long the PC consumers only care only care about paying the least possible, companies after companies will continue phase out. The way I see if eventually there will be only one PC brand maker left and the rest are all "clone" brands.

Apple like it or not did the right thing. Control the brand name tightly. They are able to price their products at higher price because they have successfully created a premium brand name. Apple consumers are willing to pay more for Apple products because they feel like Apple brand is the premium quality (true or not, doesn't matter). It's all about perception on the brand name.

Different PC brands tried but none is able to reach the Apple brand name level. It's because when another PC brand compete with lower price, other PC brands also have to drop the price. Next thing is all the PC brands are dying from making no profit because none ensures their brand name is perceived as premium quality.